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"But look at the map!"

Science officer Trevor Nielsen was desperate, almost pleading. His voice was shaking from a combination of agitation and wounded pride, as he traced a circle around a light green area on the map, with a coffee-stained finger.

"Let's ...postpone colonizing Syrte," he said.

"There's a fresh-water ocean on planet Sül, right... there... Either that, or it's one hell of a lake."

"We can't stray from our course to explore new planets just like *that*". Captain Braelyn snapped his fingers. "If we change course away from Syrte, NASA will serve my hot ass on a cold plate."

Trevor Nielsen winced at the captain's outburst. With his large, brown eyes, he looked like a lost puppy outside a butcher's shop. The Sül system was scientific virgin territory, but now it was also within reach - only a few light-years away from the current position of the Stargonaut.

God! Getting there would only take a month or so in cryo. No one would notice the difference.

The captain called Sül a "new planet" Nielsen rolled his eyes in disbelief. Back on Earth, a highly paid team of expert NASA astronomers had observed and catalogued the binary Sûl star system over fifty years ago. Promising, sure, but after much academic thinkthinkthink, they eventually filed the system under 'indifferent,' when a Python script decided Sül was too damn excotic to carry life. Furthermore, the scientists found no trace of waste products from any known organism. No fecal matter, no methane burps. This place was as devoid of life as a church library. Eventually, NASA dismissed Sül as an expensive waste of time and rocket fuel. Especially when there's a million other promising exo-planets to explore.

"But those were OLD readings," begged Nielsen. "Compatibility with human life on Sül is close to 98%... Ninety-eight!" Nielsen repeated the numbers for emphasis, and waved a thick stack of printouts at the captain. Captain Braelyn waved the printouts aside and rubbed the bridge of his nose in thought. With 80 percent compatibility with human life, their original goal, planet Syrte was one promising exoplanet. But If Nielsen was right, Sül could be even better. Fifteen percent better was not a trivial observation. Plus this system was much closer.

"- You're sure It's got fresh water?"

Officer Nielsen nodded with rekindled enthusiasm.

"And the atmosphere is fully compatible with human life."

Captain Braelyn skimmed the charts, and he liked what he saw.

Surface temperature was in the pleasant high seventies, the nutrient scans were good, as were the scans for pressure, radiation level and atmosphere. It was a long shot, but if planet Sül turned out to be inhabitable, it would cut every journey from Earth short by fifteen light-years - both ways.

"How about airborne spores?" Braelyn asked. "Bacteria, virus, spiked pollen... or that larvae thing that eats your lungs from inside?"

"Nothing!" Officer Nielsen handed the captain yet another page of numbers, charts and spectra.

"Clear as Rocky Mountain air."

Captain Braelyn returned the printouts without bothering to read them. He didn't have to. Science officer Nielsen was excellent at his job -one of the best in fact. If Nielsen gave you scientific details, you bet they were correct.

But Nielsen was also a compulsive risk-taker, who joined the academy, only after gambling his house and fortune away on a pair of jacks, in a late night poker game on Titan. But every person on board, every crew-member, top to bottom, from captain to cleaning personnel were all risk-takers. That was just something that came with the job. The Stargonaut was home to six hundred mavericks with personal histories of optimism and adventure, mischief - and sometimes, a bit of jail-time.

Racing through space with a shipful of daredevils is tricky business, but ordinary folks -those with an addiction to safety; or 'normies' who calculate the risk of dying from decompression every morning before getting out of bed, need not apply. Too many failed expeditions had proven -over and over, that risk-takers were the people most likely to survive in space. The mavericks were the ones who didn't go loopy after a few years in cryo, the ones who could stare right into the maw of a black hole and still talk about zero-grav football. The ones who could think for themselves and piss all over official protocol when facing the unknown. That's the type of that got hire on board the Stargonaut.

Because "unknown" doesn't come with a protocol.

---

Roger Keane awoke with the sound of his friends laughing, still echoing in fresh memory. It was a jolly, good-natured laugh. Maybe someone had told a dirty joke (probably Johansen), or said something improper about the captain. Keane couldn't quite recall what had been said, but he still chuckled at the notion.

Time to wake up, and go on the next shift, huh?

Keane had not slept this soundly in weeks. Shifts had been long and he'd been up to his ears in data to crunch.

All I need is ten minutes of sleep, dammit, he groaned.

Then I'll be right back up.

He squinted against the light and reached for the snooze button on the wall-mounted clock. But instead of touching fake wood, his fingers clawed at warm sand. Confused, Keane rolled onto his side.

Something was wrong, he realized... Dead wrong.

He was no longer in his cabin, nor in one of the cryo-pods. He wasn't even on board the Stargonaut. Keane was outside, on the ground, and in a place he did not recognize as anything he'd seen in the universe. He was lying down, half-buried in sand, and surrounded by tall growths that looked like Joshua trees. Above him, two dim dwarf stars punched crimson holes in a pale blue sky.

Where the fuck am I ? Back on Earth?

At first glance, the place looked deceptively like something you would find on Earth. Maybe California or Arizona. But the sky above Arizona didn't have two suns. Keane brushed sand off his legs and let the grains run through his fingers. The sand had the color and size of course table salt. It was warm to the touch, but not uncomfortably so. Startled, he scouted the area.

When stranded on an unfamiliar planet, priority one is to look for signs of alien wildlife, unfriendly civilizations, flesh-eating plants, high radiation count...

Back in cadet school, they had taught Keane an endless list of dangers to look for. He and his buddies had spent countless nights, memorizing that list, slurping Lunar Cola and smoking Starfields. But right now, that same list seemed comfortably short and condensed. Maybe looking for familiar dangers had become second nature to him

- or maybe he just hadn't paid attention in class.

When Keane found no immediate, life-threatening dangers around, he checked himself for recent injuries: broken limbs, unexplainable pains, chemical burns or signs of being involved in a fight, an accident, abduction or alien torture.

But nothing was hurting. No broken bones, no dislocated joints, no chipped teeth; not as much as a bruise or a nick from shaving. He was thirsty, but otherwise in good health. Two small scars on his lower right arm concerned him momentarily. It looked as he had been stabbed with a two-pronged fork, but Keane didn't remember receiving such a wound. Anyway, the scars were years old, and stood out pearly white against his sun-tanned skin. Keane thanked his lucky stars for being alive, before taking a few careful steps in the sand, to get an overview over the landscape -and maybe some clue to exactly where in the universe he was. Whatever planet he was on, this one was warm, dry and eerily quiet. Yet the place was rich with yuccas and Joshua trees.

If it hadn't been for the twin suns above, this place could have been the Mojave.

No footprints or tire-tracks in the sand led to this place, nor away from it. Roger Keane was stranded and confused. But most unsettling, he was alone

I might as well have fallen right out of the sky.

---

"Roger, Wake up! "a familiar voice called. "We're coming in too fast."

Hearing is the first sense to return when you wake from cryo-sleep. Vision can take anywhere from minutes to an hour to return. Full awareness can take days.

"Kirsten?"

Keane recognized the voice as belonging to exo-zoologist Kirsten Brewster, but her face was a blur of pastel colors.

Heck, everything was a blur.

Kirsten put a hand on his shoulder to support him, as he staggered from the cryo-pod in his cabin. Through the thin blue fabric of his thermo-shirt, he felt her arm shaking slightly. But she wasn't shivering from feeling cold. The sleep module kept a constant temperature of 20 Celsius, even during cryo.

No, Kirsten was shaking from fear alone. She was scared out of her wits. She wasn't complaining, or in hysterics, but something in her voice told him, this was deadly serious.

"What's the deal?" Keane mumbled. "Did I miss something?..."

"The Stargonaut is programmed to land on planet Sül, remember?"

"Err...Sure!" Keane lied. He had never heard of any place called Sül.

The waking thoughts slithered through his mind, slow like molasses. He didn't recognize the planet name. Didn't even know where they were heading. The last destination he remembered, was Johansen punching in coordinates for the Syrte system in the Swan constellation. But that was light-years ago. Keane felt hung-over and weak, confused like an aging rock star, who has forgotten in which city he's performing.

"Something is WRONG!" Kirsten said. "We're coming in, too fast, and I can't wake the captain from cryo."

"We're... crashing?"

Kirsten didn't reply in words, but Keane could see the blurry outline of her face, nodding.

The adrenaline hit Keane like a triple espresso. He stumbled, out of his cabin and staggered towards the nearest computing console. He flipped the controls into override and began typing a series of manual instructions, his still-frozen hands worked painfully slow and he double-checked every letter, spelling out the words. The post-cryo effects were intense, his hand-to-eye coordination unstable. Keane was like a drunk doing brain surgery with broken fingers. Any typo could cost them vital seconds -if not their lives.

"According to read-out, we'll hit surface in fifteen. And I do mean hit with a capital 'H'."

Kirsten was at the console, two seats away. Her typing was hard and frantic. Her TAT! TAT! TATATS! sounded like a machine gun with the hiccups.

"Roger that," she replied. "I'll see if I can un-cryo someone...ANYONE!"

The monitor before him was a jumble of colorful icons. All of which meant something. Sure, he knew how to switch into manual navigation during emergency. Every crew member did. But Keane was a communications officer, not a navigator...

"Can you get me tech officer Emilia? I don't know dick about landing a ship like this."

"Negative!," Kisten shouted back, drowning out the roar of dying engines. "She's too deep in cryo."

They were shouting at each other, trying to drown out the scream of their dying engines. Keane punched every button he remembered from training, both the ones that made sense to him, but also the ones that looked useful in a situation like this.

Retro-thrusters: ON. This would slow their descent.

Stabilizers: ON. Keane had no clue to what this setting did, but it couldn't hurt.

Automated obstacle avoidance: ON.

Auto gyro compensation: ON.

(Everything carrying the word 'auto' was good news.)

Finally, Keane threw himself back into the seat and fastened the landing harness around him.

"All done?" Kirsten shouted from her seat.

"Only thing left is to punch the 'Kiss yer ass goodbye', button," he replied.

"But I'll be damned if I can find it."

"Hey!" Kirsten shouted. "Ben Stokes's coming around."

"Who the hell is Ben Stokes?" Keane didn't take his eyes off the controls, but he could tell by the sound of Kirsten's voice, she was relived. Happy, even. He didn't recognize the name, but with six hundred crew-members aboard the Stargonaut, you didn't know everyone by name. He had met them all of course, during meetings and briefings, and in the cafeteria. But this name didn't ring a bell.

"Can your Stokes fella land a ship before we kiss the surface?"

"Ben is a xeno-botanist," she replied.

Hypercrap! A communications officer, a botanist and a zoologist. They couldn't land a space vessel with a fistful of ph.d's.

Keane hit the emergency brakes so hard, he almost punched his fist through the touchscreen.

"Then, hold on to something!" he shouted. "We're going DOWN!"

"Damnit!" shouted Kirsten. "Not now! The others are not waking up. We need more time..."

---

Time?

Time had not been on our side. We went down like a wingshot dodo.

The memory hit Keane in a flash. It was all coming back, now: the sickening roller-coaster sensation, when they discovered their landing thrusters were no good in the Sül atmosphere. He remembered punching keys, pulling handles and randomly twiddling knobs he hoped would slow their fall. He remembered the sound of Kirsten's voice cutting through the screaming noise of burning engines.

"Listen," she said. Her voice was calm, but sad.

"I don't know how to tell you this... but I'm seeing someone else now. I think we should just be friends."

Wait a minute!

Keane snapped back into the present and put that last memory on stand-by.

That sliver of memory made no sense? Couples don't break up, while crash-landing on a virgin planet, do they?

Think! Think!

Were he and Kirsten in a relationship, apart from that of being colleagues?

What did she even look like?

Was she white, black or blue-skinned?

Who WAS Kirsten Brewster?

Keane massaged his forehead with his fingertips, trying to speed up recovery from post-cryo confusion. Right now he wasn't sure of anything. He was alive and unharmed, and they had managed to land the ship without getting themseves killed.

That was the good news.

But his mind was still a scrambled mess of disembodied faces and uprooted voices; random memory flashes without continuity.

Why did he leave the Stargonaut after landing?

Maybe he went out to check for hull damage -and managed to get himself professionally lost?

Keane's legs weren't tired, his stomach wasn't screaming for food, and the thirst he felt was not close to dehydration. He could not have wandered far. Maybe a mile or two. But in which direction?

He searched his pockets for his compass and navigational PDA, but all pockets were empty, all except from his gun holster, which contained a twenty-third century Krag Desert Eagle.

At least I'm not defenseless.

Keane's ejected the clip to count the bullets. To his relief, the magazine was near full. Only a single round had been fired, leaving him with nineteen bullets.

One shot missing?

Keane had no recollection of firing the shot. He didn't even remember strapping the holster to his belt. All weapons were safely locked away in the armory, and were only released when you make planetfall.

I must have fired at something? Keane thought.

But WHAT?

It could have been a mechanical check, to make sure the pistol was in working condition. Or maybe he had fired a bullet on target practice. But that target could just as well have been something real. Something dangerous. Something alien with a pulse, teeth and an appetite for human flesh.

Keane squinted in the sunlight, searching for familiar shapes, but the planet's two suns cast multiple shadows for every object. It confused the eyes and made the planet seem more alien than it already was.

The shadows wrapped themselves around a large structure, about a mile away. From this distance, it looked like a gray, featureless cube, but whatever it was, it sure wasn't the Stargonaut. Still, the structure looked like something constructed on purpose. A large, featureless building, built by an unknown alien civilization, with an unknown purpose in mind. The thought was not comforting, but with no other obvious directions to explore, Keane set a direct course for the cube. The vegetation of Joshua trees soon thinned and gave way to barren, sandy desert. Keane waded slowly through the monotonous landscape of low, sloping hills and stretches of dry land, kicking up salty gravel with every step.

Why did we even land on this dump?

The Stargonaut's course was set for the promising Syrte system; this much he remembered. The crew had departed from Earth to probe a series of exoplanets, with Syrte as their primary destination. With a survival compatibility of 80 percent, this exoplanet was a prime candidate for rebooting Terran life after the short but devastating nuclear war of 2130. Keane knew the planetary maps over Syrte, and Syrte was lush and green. Syrte had forests. Real, proper forests and freshwater lakes. Then, for one reason or another, navigation must have changed their course for this salty heap, while he was dreaming in cryo.

If only he had printed a map before leaving ship..

Once again, Keane checked his pockets for anything useful or edible. And once again, he found nothing. Nothing, except a light green shirt-button in his trouser pocket. He twirled the plastic button between his fingers, and held it to his eye. Through the translucent shirt button, the whole planet took on a pale, green hue, that reminded Keane of something. Something recent...

Something he wanted to kill.